Preservation and Digitisation

Screen Archive South East’s preservation activities meet internationally recognised principles and standards as established by FIAF (The International Federation of Film Archives) and Film Archives UK (the organisation for public sector film archives in the UK).

The Screen Archive’s preservation activities are determined by the condition and nature of the material and the income available for this work. Every item that enters the Collection becomes an ‘original’. As a unique and usually fragile item, it is not available for public use. To safeguard the archive ‘original’ for present and future generations, it is vital to create a preservation ‘master’ by copying the original onto new film stock.

All film, video and digital ‘originals’ are transferred onto either a digital tape or disc in order to create a digital access master. Once a film is in a digital state, it is now possible for the archive to do a great deal of the required restoration work.

The Screen Archive is developing a digital store for selected digitised and restored items in its collection. It will enable material to be easily available for internal and external use. This ‘digital modernisation’ programme will provide the archive with a new mode of delivery that will underpin all of its future access activities.